About us

Earthworks St. Albans is a registered charity which offers trainees, often with learning difficulties or mental health problems, work experience and training in horticultural and land-based skills. We have a two-acre site in Hixberry Lane, St. Albans, which is managed on environmental principles and which is open to the general public a number of times a year or by appointment.

Earthworks staff and volunteers work - and learn - with the trainees to maintain the site, with its gardens, tree nursery, vegetable beds, shade tunnels and polytunnel.

Earthworks also has a contracts team which undertakes gardening and construction tasks for local individuals, institutions and organisations. We have a stall at the monthly St. Albans Farmers' Market where we sell fruit, vegetables, herbs and craft produced at Hixberry Lane. Vistors can also buy 'on-site'.

Craft workshops are run regularly on the site and at local schools. Pupils and staff also visit us to enjoy the diverse opportunities for learning: pond-dipping, cobwall building, fruit and vegetable harvesting, bug and bird box construction.

Earthworks organises and participates in outside conservation events such as hedge and woodland restoration and litter picks.

Earthworks St. Albans has been a registered charity since 1995 (no. 1067139) and a company limited by guarantee since 1999 (no. 3307683).